Hope's Folly

by Linnea Sinclair

  The Folly disengaged from her berth with a rumbling shudder. Dina Adney pushed away from her station and paced, frowning, over to engineering on Philip’s right. Behind him stood Rya the Rebel, Norlack slung across her back, the safety off her Stinger. He hadn’t looked at her in ten minutes, but he could feel her there—a bright, warm glow with dark, angry eyes. They hadn’t exchanged any words since he came on the bridge; they’d barely exchanged glances. But he knew without a doubt that although she probably itched to smack him across the back of his head for his abrupt dismissal of her in his quarters, she was watching his back and would put herself between him and any attacker.

  He wondered who would protect his heart.

  “Communications coming back online,” Mather announced. “Must have been that faulty interface.” He shook his head, clearly still perplexed, not knowing Welford’s tampering was behind it all.

  “Plague of the ittle-doos,” Philip intoned, watching Con edge the Folly away from shipyards in orbit above Seth and toward the lanes. He checked traffic in the lanes. Delainey had cleared them a path. Good.

  “Nav screens are still out.”

  “Countering for that interference,” Con said, his concentration on his screens, his fingers rapidly tapping course adjustments on his console. And more.

  At the four-minute mark, Philip knew it was time. “Mr. Mather, open intraship.”

  “Not sure it’s operational yet, sir.”

  “It is. Trust me.”

  Mather shot him a puzzled glance over his right shoulder. Then the lights on Philip’s console flashed to life. He adjusted the comm set around his ear, then keyed the microphone. “All hands, this is Admiral Guthrie. We are not, as you will shortly surmise, on our way to another berth at the shipyards. We are under way to our first mission as part of the Alliance Fleet … ”

  He swiveled his chair a quarter turn as he continued with the short briefing. Rya stood in the bridge’s wide doorway, her back to engineering, her narrowed gaze sweeping the various stations on the bridge, then back to the corridor.

  If they—whoever they were—were going to make a move, it would start now.

  He glanced at his console. Blast doors still sealed off Decks 3 and 4. He’d have to release the crew soon, but he needed a few more minutes of safety, of certainty. Of, if nothing else, a narrowing down of numbers.

  If one of his bridge staff was an enemy agent, his next announcement could well force him or her to act.

  “A Farosian Star-Ripper intends to shut down the jumpgate at the C-Six to prevent us from reaching Ferrin’s. This act, if accomplished, will also doom a hospital ship in transit—a ship with key Alliance government personnel on board. It’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen.

  “This is our first test, ladies and gentleman. It’s one we cannot fail. Guthrie out.”

  Ship’s systems flickered to life, those screens that worked flashing on. Somewhere two decks below Rya’s boots, the blast doors rumbled open—though she couldn’t hear them. She glanced at Con Welford, glanced at Philip when she thought he wouldn’t catch her doing so, and saw identical patterns of movement on their two consoles. Philip and Welford had been in total control of the ship but were releasing that control, system by system, deck by deck.

  They were now fifteen minutes out from station, fully in the lanes, with the sublights cranked to max, if the thrumming under her boots told her anything. The forward viewscreens told her two P-33s were running escort port and starboard.

  Rya raked the bridge with a quick but thorough appraisal again, ears alert to any noises behind her. A range of expressions played over the features of the gray-uniformed bridge crew she could see: excitement, curiosity, concern. Others whose faces she couldn’t see betrayed themselves with a quick tapping of one foot or a nervous jostling of a knee.

  Dina Adney stood stick-straight at her console, mouth pursed as if tasting something unpleasant. If I nudged her, she’d snap in half, Rya thought absently. Then a low whining noise behind her jerked her attention from Adney.

  Rya spun around just as a low thud reverberated through the bulkheads. The ship lurched, hard. She fell to one knee, left hand bracing her fall. Her pulse rate spiked. Her right hand yanked out her Stinger. Pain lanced her wrist and leg as her mind grabbed for answers. An explosion? Had they hit something?

  “Damage control, status!” Philip’s voice boomed behind her, over the grunts and cries of surprise on the bridge. Lights flickered as Rya pulled herself to her feet. With a quick motion, she tapped on her handbeam, letting it dangle from her weapons belt. Insurance. She did not want to face an intruder in the dim green glow of the emergency lights.

  She swept the corridor with her Stinger. Empty. She turned back to the bridge, bracing herself against the nonfunctioning security console on her right, the Norlack digging into her back, as the ship shuddered again. She had no way of providing answers with no security sensors to relay data and no security cams to provide an immediate visual report.

  Philip was still in the command chair, his screen alive with data. Adney was pulling herself off the floor, as were several other crew. Welford clutched his console, tapping in commands with a focused fury.

  “Hull secure,” Adney called out. She leaned over her console, her uniform shirt slightly twisted. One screen scrolled with data, one blinked on and off. Two others were dark. “Shields at full. Enviro working on all decks.”

  Rya sniffed, her throat catching. Her gut seized. She knew that smell. She whipped around, saw the first tendrils of gray haze sliding through the lift doors at the end of the corridor. “Fire! Lift bays one and two. Engage fire systems, now!”

  She raced for the emergency-gear locker in the corridor. The suppression systems should have kicked on automatically, just like they always had on every station she’d worked on. The fact that she was seeing and smelling smoke—and hearing no alarms—told her they hadn’t.

  She holstered her Stinger and slammed open the locker as Philip’s voice called, “Battle stations!” over intraship. An alarm wailed loudly, accompanied by Adney’s voice detailing the location of the fire. Eyes stinging, Rya pulled out a compressed-air breather mask and shoved it over her face. Hands appeared at her side—two crew from navigation. She pushed containers of breathers into their arms. “Go! Guthrie first.” Her voice sounded eerily hollow through the respirator.

  A third crew member pounded by her, squat fire extinguisher in her hands. A temporary measure at best. Why in hell hadn’t the fire systems kicked on?

  “Seal the bridge!” someone shouted.

  They couldn’t do that. The blast doors wouldn’t work on this level or the one below. Philip had ordered Sparks to disconnect them—an argument Rya had lost. Now they could well lose their lives.

  She sprinted the short distance back to the bridge, a quick glance confirming that everyone hunched over consoles or hefting emergency gear—including Philip— had a wide, clear mask covering eyes, nose, and mouth. Philip was no longer in the command chair but stood at engineering, cane on his left. Adney stood on his right. Damage-control screens flashed images and data.

  He angled around as she came up behind him.

  “Suppression systems?” she asked, because the smoke was thicker and it shouldn’t be.

  “Malfunctioning.” Determination and something else mixed in his eyes, shielded by the mask. “By accident or design, we don’t know yet. Damage control is on it. You have permission to tell me you told me so about the blast doors. Later.”

  She stared at him, only half-hearing his grim attempt at levity. Suppression-system malfunctioning. Something her father had shown her on the schematics, something about the goddamned design of a Stryker—

  She grabbed Philip’s arm. “There’s an override in the maintenance tunnel in the forward stairwell. It’s a clean-out that doubles back through the fire-suppression lines. It drove my father crazy because it bypassed the main computers and had to be manually—”

  “Welfor
d!” Philip’s voice bellowed out through his mask. “Rya says there’s a manual override right here. Get with her. Tell Sparks!”

  But Rya was already moving back to the corridor, her father’s words echoing in her head. She could see the schematics on his home deskscreen, the ship’s sections he wanted redesigned highlighted in yellow. But he had moved on to better ships before those changes were made.

  She knew exactly where they were, exactly what she needed to do. Into the maintenance tunnel from a panel in the ready room and then down. But the tunnel bordered the lift shaft and the fire. It would be hugely risky getting in.

  It could be fatal if she couldn’t get out.

  Philip had never hated his damaged leg, his rank of admiral, and his goddamned understaffed and antiquated ship more than he did at that moment, as Rya disappeared into the thickening gray haze. “Go with her!” he ordered Con, who was already rising from his seat. “I’ll sit helm.” And handle everything else he and Con did on this goddamned understaffed and antiquated ship.

  He had no idea what Rya was going to do—no, he did, and that scared the life out of him—but every inch of him wanted to be by her side when she did it. He couldn’t be. His injuries notwithstanding, he couldn’t leave his post. Frustration threatened to choke him.

  She was Cory’s daughter. Risking her just after losing Cory set his teeth on edge. But more than that, she was Rya. If anything happened to her, it would affect him in ways he didn’t want to contemplate and couldn’t rationally explain.

  He lunged back to the command chair and hit intraship’s icon for engineering. “Sparks, keep us moving.” He had an Alliance hospital ship on a collision course with a Farosian Star-Ripper and a fire on board.

  God-fucking- damn it all!

  “Adney, damage report!”

  “I’m trying!” Her voice was shrill. Or maybe it was the damned breather mask. He angled around to face her as she continued: “The fire seems to be contained between Decks One and Two Forward, but comp systems aren’t responding on Deck Four crew’s quarters. I can’t … There’s no data. I—damn it!”

  He concurred. They were damned, indeed. “Where’s Martoni?”

  “Divisionals. I think,” she said, without looking up from her console.

  “Dina, don’t waste time trying to pinpoint him.” A beep from Philip’s screen drew his attention. He adjusted course, saw a minor shield fluctuation, countered for that. The fire was his immediate concern, but that Star-Ripper was less than three hours away. “Get on intraship. Get Martoni down to Crew Four, find out what’s going on.”

  She raised her face. “But security procedures state—”

  “Now, Dina!”

  She hunched back over her console, then seconds later her voice sounded on intraship, ordering Martoni to take a team to Crew 4.

  A damage-control team, including that ponytailed officer Sparks had brought on board, swarmed onto the bridge through the ready room just as the blast doors slid shut behind them.

  “Sparks reactivated the blast doors here, sir,” the officer told him, a light, clipped accent obvious in his words. Dillon, Philip remembered. “If we can’t get the fire under control, he wants to try blowing holes at the top of the shafts. We’re worried about the effects of the decompression on these two decks. The shafts aren’t sealed like a bay. Sir.”

  Space was an airless vacuum. It would extinguish a fire that fed on oxygen, but they could lose not only the lifts but the forward stairwells, the corridors, the maintenance tunnels behind the bulkheads where even now …

  “Rya—Bennton and Welford are in the tunnel, working on the fire system’s manual overrides.” Philip rose out of his chair, grasping his cane. “Do not, I repeat, do not try anything until we’re very sure they’re out of harm’s way.”

  “Sparks recommends evacuating the bridge as a precaution,” Dillon said. “The auxiliary bridge—”

  “Is off line,” Philip replied grimly. He was standing. He never liked sitting in the command chair. It left him feeling trapped, helpless. And he’d never felt quite as helpless as he did right now.

  “Off line?” Dillon echoed.

  “On my orders. Welford needs to manually reset all the codes.” But Con was with Rya, somewhere between here and Deck 2 Forward. No crew-locator system. No security cameras.

  “Who else is authorized to reset the codes?”

  “I am. But getting down there with this leg and no working lifts will take me a good ten minutes. Another ten to reset.” He didn’t have Con’s skill; his own specialty was always more with weapons and military strategy. And he and Jodey had agreed not to trust anyone other than Con Welford with something as critical as the Folly’s primaries until they reached Ferrin’s and the requisite fail-safes could be installed.

  That included Dina Adney and Burnaby Mather, but he had no choice now. He glanced through the haze and frenzied movement on the bridge. He couldn’t spot Mather’s burly form at communications. But Adney was at the XO’s console as if glued there.

  He called her name twice before she turned, and when she did, he didn’t like at all what he saw in her eyes. Panic. Wild panic.

  Hell’s fat ass, don’t freeze up on me now, Dina. He motioned her over with a short jerk of his hand.

  “Systems aren’t responding.” Her voice shook even through the breather mask. “I can’t raise Creston at Aldan HQ.”

  He stared at her, hard. Aldan HQ was the Imperial Fleet’s central command. And Creston—Admiral Maura Creston—was dead, a casualty of another of Tage’s purges. He knew Dina knew that. Or had. “We don’t need Aldan,” he said carefully. “We need to bring the auxiliary bridge online.”

  “Online? Isn’t it—”

  “Welford took it off line on my orders.”

  “But that’s a violation—”

  “Damn it, listen to me. Get down there, now, with Dillon.” He grabbed a small datapad from Dillon’s outstretched hand and typed as he talked. “These are the ship’s primaries. You need to do a manual reset, you understand? We need to evacuate the bridge, run the ship from down there until the fire is contained. You need to get those systems online.”

  “But systems aren’t responding! Creston won’t answer me. Aldan HQ isn’t responding!”

  He stared at her for one, two seconds, the hard, ugly reality that his executive officer was in the midst of a mental and emotional collapse hitting him like the back-thrust from a hidden Gritter-10 cannon. And just as much of a surprise. He had no time to deal with this.

  And now he had one less officer he could rely on.

  “Return to your post, Commander.” He didn’t want her there; he didn’t want her anywhere near ship’s systems. But he had neither time nor the means to get her to sick bay, where the two med-techs on his roster could sedate her. He needed everyone with damage-control experience at a post now. Except—Mather. He could spare the commo long enough to get Adney, his former crewmate, to sick bay. Mather—

  Philip glanced quickly around. The communications console was vacant. That would have puzzled him more except for the amount of movement on the bridge. Everyone was trying to help. Then a familiar face flashed in his peripheral vision, somewhat skewed by the edges of the mask. “Holton!” He knew Rya trusted her.

  Sachi Holton turned, her own mask glinting under the bridge lights, made harsher by the smoky haze. “Sir?”

  “Commander Adney … must be relieved of duty, due to medical issues. I don’t think she’ll try to do anything. Get her to sick bay. She’s convinced she needs to contact Admiral Creston—the late Admiral Creston.” Hell’s fat ass, he couldn’t believe he was issuing this order. Not here. Not now. And where in hell was Rya?

  Holton’s dark eyes widened slightly, then she nodded. “Understand, sir. I’ll do everything I can to keep her and this ship safe.” She hurried over to Adney.

  One down, a thousand crises to go.

  Where in hell was Rya?

  Another bit of movement snagged his atte
ntion amid all the bodies coursing about the bridge. A large bit of movement. “Corvang!” he called out. If he had to trust someone, the Takan navigator wasn’t a bad candidate. Sparks trusted Dillon, but Corvang carried Jodey’s seal of approval. Philip pushed away the thought that Jodey had approved Adney as well. Corvang had delivered Philip’s arsenal unscathed and had been exemplary in all other areas since coming on board.

  “Sir!”

  He thrust the datapad into Corvang’s large furred hands. “The auxiliary bridge needs a manual reset. I can’t get down there to input ship’s primaries. You understand the importance of the data you now hold?”

  A quick nod of a long face partly covered by a breather mask. “I will forfeit my life first, sir.”

  Corvang would. Philip knew that. “Go with Dillon. I need that bridge operational in five minutes. Make it in four and I’ll buy you a pot of honeylace at the next port. My treat.”

  That bribe was answered with a toothy grin. Corvang knew the cost of honeylace as well as he did. “Yes, sir!”

  “Secure all stations,” Philip called out as Corvang moved away in a blur, with Dillon on his heels. The smoke was thicker, and the crew from damage control didn’t seem to be making significant headway. There were lives at risk, more than just Rya’s and Con Welford’s. He didn’t like it, but he had to consider that fact. “Prepare to evacuate the bridge.”

  There was a moment of tense silence, then a surge of action. Console lights blinked as they accepted commands, then went dark in shutdown.

  Corvang earned his honeylace. It was a little over four but less than five minutes when the auxiliary bridge came back online, databoxes winking the connection hot on the two bridge screens still operational: Welford’s and Philip’s.

  One of the last remaining bridge crew came up to Philip as he stood by the command chair.

  “Sir, do you need assistance?” The smoke was so thick Philip couldn’t read the man’s makeshift name tag.

  “Get down to Deck Five. You have work to do.”